Being a Christian, my writing often steps outside the boundaries of political correctness; in fact, I see it as my duty to present an alternative viewpoint regarding many of our culturally accepted narratives. Not wanting to debate anyone here, I won’t go into any more detail than that; all I want to do is ask about publishing. Joe Vasicek, a science-fiction writer who writes along similar lines as myself, wrote a blog post on that very subject: https://www.onelowerlight.com/writing/short-stories-author-blacklists-and-navigating-woke-science-fiction/ Essentially, he says that since he was published in an anthology of right-wing science fiction short stories, how many personalized rejections (as opposed to form rejections) he got fell when he mentioned the anthology in his bio and rose again when he didn’t. Which means I don’t see much of a market for my short stories. However, I did find a place that publishes my poetry, which is along similar lines (the Society of Classical Poets). Does anyone here know of a place that might be interested in my short stories? Thanks!
I guess the obvious answer would be Christian publishers, but they might want explicitly Christian stories (that sounds very wrong), rather than just non-PC ones. I don't have a better answer than that, just wanted to kick things off.
You could also try looking at what publishers handle right-wing authors (or those thought to be right wing) and try submitting to them. I'm talking about authors like Jordan Peterson, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, and on and on. The ones who can't get published by the mainstream.
If you’re writing speculative fiction that engages with Christianity, there’s Mysterion. https://www.mysteriononline.com/p/submission-guidelines.html They won’t reopen for submissions until July, though. Ultimately, I don’t think anyone can give you a good answer without knowing more about what you write and want to sell. I’ve seen “Non-PC” used to describe everything from “story that doesn’t walk on eggshells for fear of offending terminally online Twitter users” and “story that explicitly and enthusiastically endorses white supremacy, ethnic or religious genocide, etc.” so the term doesn’t mean much without context. Even major short fiction markets may publish the former, but almost nobody wants the latter.
Fair enough. To get an idea of the kinds of things I write, search the name Joshua C. Frank at the Society of Classical Poets (a journal of formalist poetry, none of it liberal). Brian Yapko and Susan Jarvis Bryant also have some poetry there protesting the “woke” narrative. That online journal publishes my poetry; I’m looking for something similar for my short stories, which are along similar lines. It doesn’t have to be a paying market; I just want an audience for my stories.
Woke means you are aware of racial prejudices and discrimination. So, no there is not a large market in the literary scene for racists and rightfully so. Protesting against this awareness and what it stands for sickens me.
So some people say. Others say it's a radical leftist movement that views everything through an oversimplified Marxist lens of binary victimhood and oppression while ignoring all the sublteties and nuance of reality.
These days, “woke” is a meaningless term used by those on the right the describe anything they don’t like or disagree with. It’s reductive and shows a lack of imagination and critical thinking. Just call something woke and you’re done.
It’s not possible to ignore subtlety and nuance more than those who throw the word “woke” out as a criticism of everything they don’t like.
That isn't even close to true, but this isn't the Debate Room. It was the Leftists who coined the term in the first place.
Oh boy here we go again. I’ll sit this one out, but everyone keep going. This is entertainment in its highest form. Complete with thinly veiled personal insults.
In my social circle (right-wing), when we say “woke,” we don’t mean anti-racist. We don’t approve of racism (by which we mean the belief that some races are inherently better than others) either, any more than you do. Those friends I mention have participated in the Friends of Falun Gong poetry contest, and I’m entering this year. (Falun Gong is a religion whose practitioners are being murdered in China for refusing to go along with the Communist Party.) When we use the word “woke,” we say it to describe an intolerant attitude that exists among some people on the left. Someone who is woke, by our usage of the word, believes that Christians, conservatives, white people, males, traditional male-female roles, the United States (and its flag and heroes), large families, etc., are inherently irredeemably evil. I’m not saying every liberal thinks this, but those who do have become a strong force in today’s world. Mr. Vasicek has learned the hard way that many publishers reject stories contrary to such an attitude. If you look at our poetry, you’ll see that there is not one word against people of other races. However, we do have much to say about the loss of freedom many continue to experience because of the attitude I’ve described.
To be fair, the thread title was somewhat antagonistic. We all know the power of words here and when they'll draw an emotional response (which happened, surprise!). But, to also be fair, our poster is speaking from a valid perspective. The markets are skewed and the editors prefer a certain kind of story. If you're not aware of this, then I don't think you've submitted many stories. At this point, let's agree that the posts above have defined our terms and move back to the original question. We're looking for valid markets. Which markets allow for mainstream non-agenda stories, or stories that don't care about stepping on toes? I can think of two and they're pretty much opposites. One is your action / military sci-fi market and the other is the transgressive-fiction market. IMO, the quickest way to find the choice publications for these is to go find an anthology on both, maybe multiple anthologies, and look at the list of publications where the stories were drawn from. That will give you the smaller markets that are most successful. Those smaller semi-pro magazines might even have a broader range than the anthology. And you know, it is possible to get into leftwing publishers without sculpting a story for their politics. One of my first prestigious sales was to Apex, and my story wasn't exactly left leaning. It was sort of a Christian-mysticism Swedenborgian story (there's a new term for you). I had another publisher who was an MSNBC lover and would brag about the news shows he was watching, which seemed kind of pointless to me. Anyone can watch TV, dude. How passive. But I got a couple big pieces published through him. I even got published in a book with Stephen Graham Jones through that outlet. SGJ is one of my heroes. Excellent writer. I would never have had that opportunity if I wouldn't have dared to use that market. I had another publisher who refused to come back to the United States after Trump won in 2016. How's that for partisan? I think I published three stories through him. So don't outright dismiss a market you see as leaning away from your story. It can be done.
Thanks, 7 Crowns. Isn’t transgressive fiction largely about sex, violence, crime, drugs, and all those things? I write in the opposite direction: people transgress norms established by modern liberalism in favor of those based on Christian ideals. If you want an idea of just how transgressive my writing is in that way, I’ve written poems against birth control, smartphones, and family disunity (to list the topics of my most popular poems). This is not to debate these ideas, but to show what kind of writer I am. What do you call this genre? Does it fall under transgressive literature, a subgenre perhaps (“Christian transgressive literature,” analogous to Christian romance)? Or is it something else with its own name? Examples: Again, Hazardous Imaginings, edited by Andrew Fox In Times Such as These by Joe Vasicek Some of the poetry published by the Society of Classical Poets (in particular, the poets I mentioned earlier)
Is this still a writers' forum? You know, where we choose words that have meaning, place them in sequence, forming sentences and then maybe paragraphs to convey meaning? Where we avoid lazy, conceptually suspect categorizations of people and viewpoints that don't stand up to cursory scrutiny? Maybe I need to get out more, but I don't know anyone who believes those things you've listed are inherently irredeemably evil. Neither do I know anyone who doesn't think each of those things is complex, multi-layered and ever-evolving (including white conservative christian American males whose opinions have obviously been repressed for generations, the poor dears). Just for clarity, can I still call myself woke if I only think white christians are inherently, irredeemably evil but quite like America, its heroes (like Jack Teagarden and Louis Armstrong) and feel powerless to do anything about my large family, or is it all or nothing? I do think writers should have some sense of the power of words. In answer to your original question, you can sign up for a free trial on Duotrope and I've seen options for submissions to christian-leaning publications that might suit your style. I haven't submitted to them so have no idea what the process might involve.
I heard that woke means standing up for women's rights, overly. Like the movement that states all men are rapists and stuff. Predators, who should be lined up against the wall and shot, all of them. So now I'll Google it. Since so many users defined it so many different ways, I am starting to believe that it's a completely useless word. But I am changing my opinion about this word "woke" because I found an excellent article on National https://www.nationalworld.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/what-does-woke-mean-definition-woke-culture-2023-3215758 which gives not only definitions, but an historical background to the word. Please check it out, it's worth it. Woke is a word, an adjective, that is currently evolving, and it hasn't come to a fully-evolved, stable state. It basically attributes the meaning's popularity enhanced by the Black Lives Matter movement; and it shows how the word was first coined in 1962. The article's whiff is that it's mainly a word of racial awareness, awareness of the disadvantaged marginalized races in America. The feminist thing came mainly from a Russian woke movement, where they protested against prisoning female political dissidents. Both low-brow and high-brow literature uses "woke" for its advantage, as the passage shows: "In reality, the only thing that unites the woke is an intellectual curiosity about identity and how complex, how nuanced, how rooted in disparate histories it can be. The real groupthink, the genuinely cohesive crowd, it’s increasingly clear, is that of the anti-woke, the most weaponized identity of all.” Below are shown quotes from the article. A large section of the article (not quoted) deals with the Whiteness of the Oscars. aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice) -- Webster's the word woke (the colloquial, passively voiced past participle of wake) obtained the meaning 'politically and socially aware' among BLM activists. - google Woke means being conscious of racial discrimination in society and other forms of oppression and injustice. - dictionary.com “Aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” - Merriam-Webster Woke nowadays refers to being aware or well informed in a political or cultural sense, especially regarding issues surrounding marginalised communities - it describes someone who has “woken up” to issues of social injustice. Merriam-Webster says: “Stay woke became a watch word in parts of the Black community for those who were self-aware, questioning the dominant paradigm and striving for something better.” Where does the word woke come from? The earliest usage of woke in this politically aware sense can be traced back to a 1962 New York Times Magazine article written by William Melvin Kelley, titled If You’re Woke You Dig It. The article described the appropriation of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) by white beatniks. Additionally, in 1971, the play Garvey Lives! by Barry Beckham reads: “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon’ stay woke. And I’m gon help him wake up other black folk.” Erykah Badu’s 2008 song Master Teacher also featured the phrase “I stay woke”, which helped popularise the word. In 2012 when Russian feminist group Pussy Riot were imprisoned for a protest intended to shine a light on the oppression of women, Badu Tweeted: “Truth requires no belief. Stay woke. Watch closely. #FreePussyRiot.” The use of the word reached mainstream vernacular when the Black Lives Matter movement used the hashtag #staywoke following the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri by police in 2014. “The word woke became entwined with the Black Lives Matter movement; instead of just being a word that signalled awareness of injustice or racial tension, it became a word of action. Activists were woke and called on others to stay woke,” Merriam-Webster explains. What does woke stand for? Unlike other four letter words associated with the social justice movement, the individual letters of woke don’t stand for anything. The word woke itself is not an acronym. What does ‘woke police’ mean? The term “woke police” is used, mainly, by critics of the movement as a way to negatively describe those who identify as woke and fight for social justice issues. The term is used to claim that woke people are policing others actions and words, generally in response to backlash someone else has received for their words or actions. For example, if a celebrity has been found to have used racist or sexist language and is being held accountable for their actions, defenders of said person may say that the “woke police” have been offended, as a way of undermining the backlash.
In a nutshell, as far as I can tell: those who find racial, sexual, etc. discriminatory practices unacceptable, use "woke" as a morally positively charged word, to signify a resistance to discrimination. To the anti-woke movement, "woke" is a unifying word charged with moral negativity, showing the fight against discrimination as unfairly militant.
You know, I'm not sure where you'd fall then. The transgressive stuff is completely off the rails. They do not care about social norms and they usually seek to shatter them. I've seen them write stories about themes that are outright forbidden by publishers. You're almost coming at it from the opposite direction. You're still ignoring the norm, but you're being blatantly traditional in the same way that they're being blatantly radical. I suppose you would call it conservative fiction, but this is conservative in the non-political sense. More like Swiss Family Robinson is conservative rather than say <insert politician, not even going to open that can of worms>. In Swiss Fam, you have a story about self-sufficiency, family, faith, and a whole lot of firepower as those kids blast their way across the island, BBQing everything that moves for dinner. That kind of conservatism. It can even be considered blue collar. Back in the day it would be in magazines like Reader's Digest. Who's filling that void now, I wonder? There's no reason it shouldn't be filled. I'm not a poetry expert but it looks like that site of yours is the main one. I wish I could offer you more than that. The trick with the anthologies works if you can find an anthology they've done or maybe even one they've reviewed. You can source the stories back to their point of origin and that opens up many, many potential markets. I think you'd be surprised how many times a conservative poem can get into the average publication. I really do think that some of the sites you're dismissing will let you in. And you know what could work? Get yourself a major poetry anthology, find those poems that you feel are traditional, and then source those poems back. There has to be a few in there to chose from. You'll find someone else who has already blazed the trail to a viable market. ---------------------- Now I don't want to be the only one answering you, but my Spidey-sense tells me that this thread is a powder keg and the fuse is lit (whenever it splutters, a poster joyously relights it), so I'm going to end it here. Remember, people: Assume the best of the other writers here and they'll do the same for you. We want everyone to get their words where the world can read them. THREAD CLOSED
